Democracy of Speed:

Friday Night Drag Racing in a Small Southern Town

John Mason

In the beginning there was smoke, noise, and power. Acrid smoke from
tires that burns the eyes, noise so loud that it hurts, power as carefully
modulated as it is explosive. Utterly enchanting for someone, like me,
who has always been drawn to the art and science of making cars go fast.

From the time I first saw two cars launch themselves down the track
at Eastside Speedway, I was sure that this would be a good place to make
photos. The light, the smoke, and the cars (and motorcycles) brought me
back to the track time and again. So did the people.

Automobile racing is always about metal and flesh. Drivers and mechanics
struggle to coax maximum performance out of both their cars and themselves.
Racing is also about a particular kind of intimacy between metal and flesh.
The car and the driver are a pair, winning and losing together. At this
track, the driver is usually the mechanic, as well, and will have spent
hours under the car turning a wrench. Drivers learn to read their cars
as well as they read themselves. But the relationship is not an equal
one. It is about mastery. A good driver is to a good car as a virtuoso
musician is to his or her instrument.

At Eastside and hundreds of similar dragstrips all over the country,
racing is about money, too. But it's certainly not about getting rich.
This can be an expensive sport. Racers seldom, if ever, win enough in
prize money to cover their expenses. If you said that racing is about
having fun while going broke, you wouldn't be entirely wrong.

II.

Drag racing has peculiarities that set it apart from other motorsports.
It's over in an instant. Two cars race side-by-side down a straight 1/8th
mile or 1/4th mile track. At Eastside, the fastest cars complete the 1/8th
mile course in under five seconds and reach speeds of over 130 miles an
hour. Drivers run in one of three classes, based on the degree to which
their cars have been modified or purpose-built for the track. Drivers
who run in the Trophy Street class may well drive the car that they raced
on Friday night to work on Monday morning. A Super Pro driver, on the
other hand, might have spent as much as $140,000 on his car, which is
wholly unfit for anything other than covering a very short distance in
an equally short time. Motorcyclists and young people race in classes
of their own.

The racing at Eastside is bracket racing. The slower of the two cars
gets a head start that is just enough, ideally, for the cars to arrive
at the finish line at exactly the same time. They rarely do, because the
driver's skill--his or her quickness, precision, and consistency--makes
a very large difference. Slower cars often beat faster cars. Indifferent
drivers rarely win.